For seven hours on Thursday, June 26, and three hours on Thursday, July 8, ELLE.com shadowed Andrea Francis as the single mom navigated life in New York City's Chelsea-Elliott housing projects.

The average monthly rent in the Chelsea-Elliott housing projects, a duo of brick mid-rises on 25th and 26th Streets between Ninth and 10th Avenues in New York City's Chelsea neighborhood, is $477. According to The New York Times, the average rent for the neighboring doorman buildings hovers somewhere around the $3,200-a-month mark. Andrea Francis, a 35-year-old unemployed Medgar Evers graduate and U.S. Army Reserve veteran, has been living here with her five-year-old son, Ayden, since 2012.

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Morrigan McCarthy

"I want better," she says while preparing breakfast for Ayden, who attends AMAC, a school on West 17th Street that caters to children with autism spectrum disorder. "Where we used to live, they even cemented the grass. Now," she says, gesturing toward the window, from which you can see the stretch of tarmac that annexes the Chelsea and Elliott buildings, "he has his choice of two playgrounds."

Morrigan McCarthy

Photo: Morrigan McCarthy

"Where we used to live" means Brownsville, a gang-infested eastern Brooklyn neighborhood that New York magazine recently described as "a kind of walled city, its uniquely insulated and canyonlike aspect created by the public-housing buildings that occupy the horizon in every direction," where Francis' parents, both Caribbean immigrants, still reside. According to the article, which details the rampant, gang-related killing of neighborhood youths, Brownsville, per capita, "has by far the highest homicide rate in the city." On average, 23 people are killed a year in Brownsville. "You make it out of Brownsville," she starts, turning the familiar New York adage on its head, "You can make it anywhere."

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This muggy July morning, Ayden, a precocious kid with an olive complexion, large espresso-colored eyes, and an affinity for trains, does not want to go to school. But by 8 A.M., like clockwork, he's boarding the yellow school bus that will travel him three avenues east and a half dozen blocks south. Come fall, he'll attend kindergarten at PS-33 Chelsea Prep, which, according to a recent survey, ranked 147th out of 2,275 public elementary schools in New York City. On the rare occasion that Francis walks her son to school, people mistake her for the nanny. "You know the area," she says with a laugh.

Morrigan McCarthy

Morrigan McCarthy

After Ayden is off to school, Francis returns home to have a bite to eat. She'd prefer to lie down, she says, because her Crohn's disease, which first presented itself in the form of pain, nausea, weight loss and a host of digestive issues in 2002, but did not get formally diagnosed until 2004, makes even routine errands an ordeal. (Before she got her symptoms under control, via a daily dose of Prednisone and routine visits with Gastroenterologist Elana Maser at New York's Mount Sinai hospital, she was crawling around on her hands and knees with a broom to clean.) "I like to have things in order because I can't control my illness," she says. At the grocery store she stocks up on Ayden's favorite foods—yogurt, eggs, cereal, and apple juice. Despite the extra effort cooking entails, Francis won't buy ready-made frozen meals for her son because she refuses to "dumb down his palette."

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Morrigan McCarthy

At 10 A.M., she takes her Prednisone. Though she hates the medicine's side effects—"It feels like I'm going through a fog," she says—she's made a pact with herself to take the 15-milligram pill before noon every day. Then, she settles in on Ayden's bed, which doubles as the living room couch, to watch some TV: The Wendy Williams Show, The Millionaire Matchmaker, or, her favorite, Gilmore Girls. "I've probably seen every episode five or six times," she says.

Morrigan McCarthy

By 12 P.M., she's already eaten three times, including a few servings of Double Stuf Oreos and a bowl of homemade soup. She's eager to get her weight up so that she can stop sidestepping a closet of size-6 clothing that no longer fits. Several times throughout the day, she expresses distaste for her pronounced cheekbones. "People say, 'You don't look sick,'" she says, "but they don't know. I'll probably be on medicine for the rest of my life." It was her illness, in part, that drove a wedge between her and her estranged husband, Charles*. "It ain't easy dealing with a wife that's sick, coming home not knowing what kind of mood I'm in," she says. "We grew apart." And though the two, in her words, "co-parent," and a couple days a week, Ayden's dad meets him after school with McDonald's in tow (and an extra apple pie for Mom), they're currently separated. "I want my family," she says wistfully, "but I know what I deserve. He does love me, but not in the way I want."

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Morrigan McCarthy

After school, Ayden becomes engrossed with his iPad. And though Francis is feeling low energy, she refuses to let him see her struggle. "I don't want him to act a certain way because I don't feel well. I never want him to feel like he has to take care of me," she says. "He's not an adult."

Morrigan McCarthy

On Thursdays throughout the summer, a local, church-run organization called the New York Dream Center distributes food to Chelsea-Elliott residents. Today, a group of Midwestern high school student volunteers have brought chalk, hula hoops, and bubbles for the children. Though he has a few friends in the building, Ayden mostly plays by himself on the jungle gym, but frequently checks in with Mom to make sure she hasn't forgotten about him.

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Francis looks forward to the visits with the Dream Center, where she often volunteers her time, and happily takes them up on everything from multivitamins to baked goods. "You only starve here if you want to starve," she says. That's not to say that Francis' lifestyle mirrors that of her posh surroundings. "Just last month a camera crew was filming an apartment to be shown on Million Dollar Listing," Marlyse Rush, the Dream Center's director of outreach, who recommended Francis for this article, told me via e-mail. "I found it ironic that their van was parked in front of the fire hydrant where we usually park our van up to do weekly food distributions."

Morrigan McCarthy

And though she's currently out of work—2007 was the last time she had a full-time job; since then, she's worked on and off, most recently as a sales rep—Francis doesn't plan on living off of unemployment for much longer. On a family vision board, she has pasted an image of a summer home, a guide to paying off student loans, and words such as "family," "love," "commitment," and "security." She hopes to get her driver's license by the end of this year; her dream, she says, is to own property by the end of 2015. And though she once hoped to be a psychiatric nurse (before her diagnosis, Francis was taking classes at Mount Saint Mary College), now she'd be content with a clean bill of health and a happy child.

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"I just try and be grateful for what I do have. I've never been homeless; I've never been hungry; I've always had money to pay my bills," she says. "I mean, I could be better. I don't want to live in housing for the rest of my life. I don't want to have grandchildren in housing. I would love to go back to work, have a career, live in a condo, and not have to deal with certain things—like crime and drugs and miscellaneous things that come with living in housing." She pauses for a moment to make sure Ayden isn't being bullied by some bigger kids with water guns. "Everyone can't be that fashion model; everyone can't be rich. That's their life—and that's good for them—but I'm content. I'm not really envious of what anyone else has."

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